Council backs tourism, election overhauls

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The Los Angeles City Council supported the idea of the city teaming up with other cities in the county to boost tourism.

But that's one of the few ideas to win support among council members out of more than a dozen in the wide-lensed report the LA 2020 Commission presented Tuesday.

“I think the city has probably never done enough to market itself and to seek tourism,” Councilman Paul Koretz said, joining many others who signed off on establishing a regional tourism authority.

Tourism has become a major growth industry for cities and counties across the country as both domestic and international travel have surged since the economic recovery.

Los Angeles County reported a record 42.2 million visitors last year, according to the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board. Tourism contributed an estimated $18.4 billion in direct spending to the Los Angeles economy, supporting 436,700 jobs. The board expects visits to the county to jump to 50 million by 2020.

The month-old “A Time for Action” report recommends 13 ways to improve the city's transparency, fiscal stability and job friendliness. They include merging the ports of L.A. and Long Beach and moving city elections to the same cycle as state and federal elections.

The LA 2020 visions of a more regionally integrated, prudent city of Los Angeles, commissioned last year by Council President Herb Wesson, have become the main rival to the early plans of Mayor Eric Garcetti's administration.

But after months of conversation centered on a negative report the commission released in December, the members seemed prepared for a raft of tough questions on Tuesday.

“Let's just agree we can make change. Let's just agree on that, today, that we can listen to each other and have a good exchange of ideas,” said Co-chairman Mickey Kantor, a former U.S. secretary of commerce, in his opening remarks.

There was plenty of negative feedback. Most centered around the implication the city needs to run itself better and invest smarter in city worker pensions, with independent offices overseeing finances and the Department of Water & Power.

“I think there's a zeitgeist presumption that these are political pawns who do what they're told,” Councilman Mike Bonin said. “I challenge that.”

The port merger received some interest, though nearly every council member who touched on it noted that Long Beach sounded staunchly opposed to merging when the report was published April 9.

Only the election overhaul, which the city has been exploring in its own committee, and a regional tourism authority modeled after the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority received clear support from the council.

Cities like West Hollywood have benefited from active marketing campaigns, said Koretz, a former West Hollywood councilman who said he helped found that city's marketing corporation.

“I think it's partly responsible for their significant economic success and the fact that they have a 100 percent reserve of their budget,” he said.

There is increasing recognition across the industry that a regional approach to tourism promotion has its advantages.

Last year the Orange County Visitors Association reorganized to ensure that all the county's cities worked together to promote tourism countywide. Since then, the Orange County group has opened tourism offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Dubai.

“Find that tourist from China who goes to Beverly Hills and can draw the border with Los Angeles or who visits Venice and can distinguish between the sands on the Venice Boardwalk and the sands of Santa Monica,” Co-chairman Austin Beutner said.

Despite the consensus, it's unclear when any of the recommendations will turn into ordinances. Some of them will be sent to council committees for further vetting, Wesson said.

Beutner said the LA 2020 Commission did its job of analyzing the issues and may return for further conversations in committee.

“The ball's in their court,” Beutner said. “We're not an advocacy organization.”

And Wesson said that it's up to members of the council to find the political will to pass any appealing ideas.

“One of the things that I think was unfair of us was to ask the commission, ‘Well, how do we do that?' ” he said.

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